Part 1 of a 2 part interview I did with Christian apologist Stephen Bancars. In this episode, we talk about how aliens are real, and how they have been around for thousands of years, and why we should be concerned about them.
00:05:46.280That's Romans 1 because to get closer to God is to get closer to the guilt and shame that remains in our conscience, the skeletons in our closet, basically.
00:05:55.460So I finally just laid at all the feet of Christ, wept at His feet.
00:06:05.820Spiritually, He showed up, not physically, not visibly, but His presence just overwhelmed me, and I couldn't stand up, and His presence started to fill me.
00:06:16.740It was in front of me, but it was also within me and around me.
00:06:22.820I was experiencing what it is and what it means to be born again.
00:06:25.420You know, John chapter 3, unless you're born of the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
00:06:30.800And that is when, for about five minutes, I was just getting wrecked, getting wrecked by the presence of Jesus, the manifest, spiritual, literal presence of Jesus.
00:06:42.340And I went back inside my house after, and I was like, I'm wrong.
00:07:06.960He teaches us, even if we don't have a chapter and verse, He will lead us and direct us toward the conclusion of that chapter and verse until we get there, if that makes sense.
00:07:44.440What was the tipping point for you that made you look around and say, hang on just a second, everything that I have believed and taught and gotten money from is wrong?
00:07:57.040What kind of pushed you, obviously, the Holy Spirit, but was there an event or something that happened that pushed you to repentance?
00:08:06.340What it was was recognizing the fruitlessness and futility of the practices, the philosophy, and the worldview I had been implementing into my life insofar as they gave me actually zero freedom over my mind, my emotions, my will.
00:08:33.540My heart was just busted up and broken from my past, and it desired things it shouldn't desire.
00:08:38.480You know, Jesus says adulterous thoughts, murderers, thefts, these things come out of the heart and defile a person.
00:08:43.460The problem is we need a heart transplant.
00:08:45.040And basically, I was realizing my worldview could not effectively act as a remedy for my emotional brokenness and my depravity, my sinful depravity.
00:08:58.940And basically, I had to confess to a person in my life who I was with at the time that I'd been living a double life behind their back, essentially.
00:09:07.060And I confessed this, and it wrecked her.
00:09:11.160Obviously, it wrecked me that I had wrecked her.
00:10:40.660You know, he says all who seek will find.
00:10:42.480Whoever knocks the door will be open to them.
00:10:44.700And he says I by no means will turn away those who come to me.
00:10:47.340Steven, can you tell us what the New Age is?
00:11:00.980I know it's, you know, a little bit of an amorphous term that can encompass a lot of different things.
00:11:07.200But it's really important to me that my audience can kind of recognize some of the aspects of it, not just the extraterrestrial things, which may be obvious to a lot of Christians.
00:11:17.300But talk about just what the New Age philosophy is and maybe even how it manifests itself in ways that Christians might not recognize.
00:11:26.600So when we talk about the New Age movement or New Age spirituality, that's really an umbrella term.
00:11:32.040It's a little bit nebulous, but it's kind of it refers to this bucket of worldview distinctives and bucket of practices that go under this title.
00:11:41.740But really, they draw a little bit from Buddhism, a little bit from Eastern mysticism, a little bit from Gnosticism and esoteric philosophy from the late 1800s, from theosophy, Helena Blavatsky's school of thought.
00:11:55.960As she started, it draws a little bit from the kind of thing you would hear Ram Dass talk about back in his heyday, his glory days.
00:12:03.080And so and Aleister Crowley a little bit as well.
00:12:05.840But what we're talking about essentially is a worldview that, for one, occupies, I would say, I would say it's the biggest threat to the church today.
00:12:16.820It's the biggest threat to Christians today is the New Age movement.
00:12:20.200You have 27 percent of the American population who identify as spiritual but not religious, according to a Pew study center, Pew research, Pew study.
00:12:30.840And what was interesting is that there was a study released by Pew in October of 2018.
00:12:38.980And what they found was that 61 percent of the American population holds at least one New Age belief.
00:13:36.180Of the American population holds to some kind of New Age belief.
00:13:38.800And this is being taught by Russell Brandt, Jim Carrey, Ellen DeGeneres in varying degrees, Oprah Winfrey has been popularizing this stuff like crazy.
00:13:48.920And so it's really coming down from the highest levels of social influence.
00:13:52.300And it's no longer just some kind of fringe topic on the outskirts of society where you've got some hippies in Sedona, Arizona.
00:14:00.120But dropping acid, now you have some of the best-selling authors of all time, the best-selling book series of all time, like Conversations with God, for example.
00:14:10.340Our New Age, I was so surprised to see Marianne Williamson take a run at things because I'm thinking this is a New Age teacher I used to listen to.
00:14:18.120Have you heard what she has to say about Christ?
00:14:20.400She believes that Christ is something within man.
00:14:39.920And so that's one of the distinctives I want to talk about is man's ontology.
00:14:44.920This is a really, really big issue and it's helpful for Christians to know this one thing in particular, is that the New Age movement would equivocate God and man.
00:14:54.520They would say God and man share ontology.
00:14:57.720They share nature, essence, and substance because they believe in pantheism.
00:15:02.620So they believe that the universe is divine.
00:15:04.400Pan means all, theism comes from the Greek word deos, which means God.
00:15:09.140That is the theism and the philosophy of New Age spirituality.
00:15:13.480Some would say God is also transcendent and beyond space and time, in which case you have panentheism, where the universe is God, but God also exists beyond the universe in some sense.
00:15:25.040But the point is, when you redefine God to be the substance of reality and the very essence and core nature of every molecule, that necessarily means that that's also my identity and my core substance and my core nature.
00:17:14.720Essentially, it doesn't really matter which path you take, which religious path you take, because the destination is the exact same.
00:17:21.660And they believe that the spirit world is not heaven.
00:17:24.960It's kind of like this neutral, ethereal realm where you go, you do a life review, you hang out with your spirit guides, you get put into like a soul group where you're with other souls who are around your same level of development.
00:17:38.620And maybe you'll take some classes and so forth in the spirit world before you choose your next incarnation and come back to earth,
00:17:45.980where you plan your life in advance and you reincarnate so you can learn the lessons that you need to learn in the next life for the sake of your soul's development.
00:17:53.720And keep in mind, too, this sounds crazy.
00:17:55.820This might sound like complete, you know, wankery to some of your audience.
00:17:59.780But this is coming from books that have sold millions of copies.
00:18:03.080The Destiny of Souls, Journey of Souls, Dr. Michael Newton, we're talking about, you know, Dr. Jim Tucker.
00:18:08.820However, this stuff is promoted all over the place, and it's very, very prevalent and prominent in New Age spirituality.
00:18:15.400And the Bible says in Hebrews 9.27, it's been appointed unto man to live once, and after that comes the judgment.
00:18:25.560We're given one chance, and Jesus Christ paid our penalty in full on the cross, so there's nothing, there's no karma we have to alleviate in the next life.
00:18:33.900If Jesus paid everything in full, we have one shot at this life, and the Bible's very clear about that.
00:18:39.200But they would teach that we all go back to this neutral spirit world, and we kind of, like, hang out for a little bit, and then choose our next incarnation.
00:18:46.040It's this never-ending cycle until we work our way up this scale of enlightenment and soul development, until we finally bypass the need to reincarnate.
00:18:54.800And then we can just do work teaching other souls in the spirit world as we work our way up back to full and true unity with the Creator.
00:19:01.900Another thing that people would, it would be helpful for people to know is that they would treat all religions as being equally valid as one another.
00:19:09.600So this would be called religious pluralism, where there's really no difference in the weight between the worldview claims that Islam would make versus Buddhism versus Christianity, for example.
00:19:22.420All religions are equally valid and equally true.
00:19:25.980And you see this kind of rhetoric in our culture all the time now, where it's apparently, like, politically incorrect to imply, to let alone say, but to merely imply someone's view about God is wrong.
00:19:35.900Or their spirituality is wrong, the New Age movement would say they're all equally valid, they all lead us to the same destination.
00:19:42.160There's a lot of different things the New Age talks about, but if people could understand that's just this one point, that man is not God by nature, there's a distinction between man and God, there's a creator-creation distinction,
00:19:53.960that we're ontologically separated from God and we're relationally separated from God through sin.
00:19:59.820That needs to be our starting point, ontological and relational separation from God, and therefore we need a mediator.
00:20:05.900Therefore, we need someone to reconcile us.
00:20:08.680Versus, if you put man in God's place, he can have relationship with God in and of himself, because he's ultimately deity by nature.
00:20:17.600God is a presence or a force that exists within him, and that's really what the New Age worldview hinges upon, is the deity of man.
00:20:25.520Which goes back to Genesis 3, by the way, where Satan promises Eve that through special knowledge, in this case, special knowledge of self, special knowledge of your true nature, you can become as God.
00:20:35.900Or as the gods, it's the same lie, just repackaged and wrapped up in a bow of political correctness now.
00:20:43.220Right. Oh, gosh, I have so many questions to ask you.
00:20:46.680One thing that I want to point out, going back to what you said a few minutes ago about the importance in the New Age of kind of self-discovery, this journey to figure out who you really are and to manifest this inner power.
00:20:59.680Yes, we see it among those New Age teachers that maybe people would be able to point out, especially Christians like Marianne Williamson and things like that.
00:21:07.920But I also think it's important to point out that this manifests itself in a lot more subtle ways that are or seem vaguely Christian, that I think a lot of young Christian women are attracted to.
00:21:19.920And it comes in the form of this kind of self-love world and books dedicated to self-discovery and self-fulfillment that sound vaguely biblical.
00:21:29.900You know, they start with the idea, you know, that God loves you and maybe you're made in the image of God and therefore you have purpose, which of course is true.
00:21:37.140But then it says in order to become more spiritual, in order to become more successful, you need to go deeper and deeper inward and to find, you know, that inner goddess who you really are.
00:21:48.860If it weren't for societal expectations, if it weren't for, you know, religious standards, if it weren't for all of these things and institutions that are holding you back, who you are deep down on the inside is perfect.
00:22:00.360And once you find her, once you learn who she is through different personality tests or whatever, once you learn to love that perfect goddess deep down inside, then you will be fulfilled.
00:22:14.780It's presented in a more practical, even entrepreneurial way or self-help way.
00:22:20.960And I think it's important, too, for women to realize that that is a part of new age teaching and mystical, unchristian, unbiblical teaching as well.
00:22:33.640I would say I would agree primarily because it has to do with there being something intrinsically good that's hidden and embedded within you and your life's purpose.
00:22:44.060And what's going to launch you into success is you tapping into that and drawing it out, whether it's just some kind of sovereign power that you carry within yourself, a higher self.
00:22:54.140They might use that kind of vernacular, your higher self, your real self, your true self.
00:23:01.240They'll usually sprinkle in cliches about the universe loving you.
00:23:07.520They speak about providence as though it's almost like some kind of deity.
00:23:11.340And they usually kind of weave this into their narrative.
00:23:15.320But I would say it's completely antithetical to the biblical worldview.
00:23:18.300And it's much more comparable to new age spirituality, which emphasizes there really is something intrinsically good, deeply embedded within man.
00:23:27.940And Jesus tells us the exact opposite.
00:23:30.440You know, Matthew chapter five tells you the path to live the life God created you to live.
00:23:36.320It's to take really the exact opposite route.
00:24:31.840But if we're looking to something in ourselves to be our source of redemption and our source of life purpose, nobody lets us down more than us.